


An Ache of Love

by girl_wonder



Category: An Experiment in Love - Hilary Mantel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-18
Updated: 2008-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the mornings, it is hardest to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ache of Love

**Author's Note:**

> A billion thanks to innie_darling for the beta-fu magic.
> 
> Written for Ji

 

 

At breakfast, with my eggs and toast and paper and heavenly-smelling coffee, I am reminded of the few mornings we spent together. It is hard not to remember them: they all smelled the same. They tasted differently, the way that you can taste the difference between raspberry and buttercream chocolates, but they smelled like girl skin and the fine, feminine scent of her perfume, left over the veins of her wrist and hiding under her jaw.

There is some sweetness in the kisses of girls that boys' lack. As though the old rhymes are true: girls are made of sugar and spice. At least Lynette was; her kisses were as gentle as warm milk after the curfew at Tonbridge Hall.

Some other girl would have claimed that the platonic kindnesses extended in friendship were what mattered more than the other, that I should have valued the warm blanket of her affection more than the sensuality of her fur coat. But that would be a lie of the most callous sort: the kind of lie that wears away at what was until this is nothing more than one of those books about two girls from disparate neighborhoods who end up friends.

To lie like that would be to omit the truth that Lynette would have warmed milk for anyone, would have sat with anyone who needed a gentle hand.

She would have let anyone wear her coat. That was who she was.

So instead of lies, a truth: her skin softened from her shoulder to the outside curve of her breast. She was not ticklish, but her skin was easily affected by touch. Goosebumps rose when my fingers ran that path. Down from her neck, across the rise of her collarbone, to her nipple.

That is the truth, make of it what you will.

*****

Julianne never brought home Rogers. The only men that ever sat on her bed were from a group of people beyond Rogers. Sometimes all I remember about them are the fabrics they wore: blacks, greens, plaids. If they wore corduroy suits it was as though they'd put on a costume for a party. It was a rarity and one that amused Julianne to no end.

I cannot separate their faces into groups of the ones that Julianne cared for and the ones she didn't, because she simply cared more about other things.

"Carmel is saving herself for marriage," Julianne said once, loudly, and a silence fell. 

It was a lie, but all my words were saved for Niall, and all of my laughter was saved for him as well: I bottled up the bubbles of amusement in my chest to share with him when the time was right.

The boys treated me differently after that. I had become a rare species of girl visible only by my difference. None of them was Niall, so I didn't bother to correct the misapprehension. Their stares of wonder were more weighty and exciting than the truth anyway. It was an old-fashioned concept, then, but the type of old-fashioned that was nonconformist. The implication was that I was counter-culture by nodding to an earlier sense of polite society.

I didn't mind it. I didn't mind most of Julia's conceits. Maybe if I'd spoken up then to say I wasn't a virgin, or if I'd said something that indicated that Niall wasn't a convict, that he was just a nice boy who loved me, it wouldn't have come to what it did later.

Silence is what kills women's relationships. I know that now, but at Tonbridge Hall the only silence we had was a sort of private aggression. We were silent around Karina sometimes, as though we could drown her in it. I imagined her, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of our silence, until she choked on it. Then again, if she could swallow plain macaroni, that bland gummy mess, she could swallow our silence, which was at least seasoned with the politics of women.

The relationships that form between women have become something we look at from the corner of our eyes now. We do not like to admit that our inner workings are different from men's, but they are. Men's emotional politics cannot be as complicated as women's. I have to believe that men's relationships with each other are almost rural in their simplicity. Women's have the complexity of tort law.

Ours is subtle, our hatred and our love. All women understand that complex system of checks and balances in a way that most men can only blunder through.

If the Labor Party men had known that, if they'd been able to see the three of us - four with Claire - sitting in C21 building a wall of silence around Karina, maybe they would have looked up from their boring speeches and realized that it was women who had the stamina for complex lobbying on behalf of the Party. Instead, they gave their dry speeches to Party followers, and we sat, staring at Karina's drying jumpers, feeling a complex pity and love for Lynette.

Lynette hummed as she painted her toenails. She rarely did it when Karina was there, but our presence made her brave, I think. It must have been after Niall sent me the letter, and after Sue, because I was wearing her fur coat in the mirror, and it seemed to swallow me, seemed to block out everything except for the scent of fur and the scent of her coral pink nail polish.

Even Julianne couldn't put herself between us, then. Her voice cut the silent garrote we'd wound around Karina's neck. Not out of any pity for Karina, I think, but rather because Jules didn't have the patience for the politics of women. She never did. Maybe we loved her for it, maybe we hated her, but she was a queen seated in our court, and she could work the mechanics of statecraft but she didn't have to.

Julianne said, "You know I do think that Edith's Roger is an extremist."

I half-turned, to show my interest and observe how the coat moved as I did. For a moment, I wondered which of us was wearing the other. Could the coat merely be using me to better feature itself? I was far more dynamic than the satin hanger.

"What do you mean?" Claire asked, her eyes wide.

Lynette glanced up, then, and her eyes caught mine in the mirror. She continued painting and I reached down to hold my waist between my hands, thumb touching thumb across my spine. We shared the secret look of conspirators; neither of us had wanted to play Julianne's conversational game.

"He believes in the power of the workers to take over the wealth of the rich," Jules said, with a self-satisfied amusement. "He's one meeting away from making Molotov cocktails to throw at Parliament."

"Stop," Lynette said, her lips hiding a smile. "You've never even talked to him. Besides, Carmel goes to Labor Party meetings."

"But she's smarter than the speakers there," Julianne said in her most matter-of-fact voice. It was one of the kindest things that she'd ever said to me, the most direct compliment, and it was in argument. Her eyes trapped mine in the mirror before sliding back to Lynette. "Roger believes every word his little revolutionary friends preach."

"You're just bored," Lynette said, capping the little bottle of polish, scraping her thumb across the nail bed of her big toe. "Bored and irritable."

Julianne made a face, her eyes trailing up the ceiling, down the wall, skimming over Karina's jumper and then back to Lynette's fingers on her toes.

I watched them dance around each other until Lynette caught my eyes again. The satin of the inside of the coat came off my shoulders like water, flowed down my arms and onto the ground. I scooped up the fur, guiltily checking for dust.

*****

I wasn't expecting it when it began. Maybe earlier, when I'd first met her and Lynette was exotic and far enough away from who I was that it would have been almost normal. But after so long knowing her, I didn't expect it. Not at all. You understand that all those stereotypes about school girls boarding together is mostly fiction. We understood what a lesbian was, we understood that some girls were like that, like Claire looking forever at Sue, but it just wasn't done.

There were rumors about Jules, but Julianne lived to make rumors in those days. She couldn't even be bothered to show up in the mornings, and I almost enjoyed having the room to myself in those days. Living alone felt almost like independence. I didn't understand the Sophys of the world who whined vaguely about empty rooms, about missing roommates.

I couldn't imagine anything better than having the space to breathe in.

Jules was away when it finally began; she was off with one of her new boyfriends, had tossed a, "Don't expect me back until Monday," over her shoulder, wrapping her new wool scarf around her neck. The red made her look even more pale, even more delicate.

About an hour before dinner, Lynette opened our door and glanced sideways once to Julianne's desk before coming in all the way. She held out a delicate paper box, opening the top carefully, without meeting my eyes. Instead, she tilted her head slightly to look at the book I had open on my desk - a series of case histories.

She shrugged and glanced up finally, to offer the chocolates.

They were arranged meticulously in the box, frilled white paper cups enclosing the dark shells, candy flowers painted on. Now, I wish I had asked her who had given them to her, I wish I had bothered to find out if someone loved her, someone other than me. I wish I knew if they had been a gift from her lover, because they were not the type of candy one sent to a friend.

In retrospect, when I try to imagine her father choosing the candies for her, I cannot imagine him choosing those sensual flavors. A father would choose nuts and too sweet toffee. Maybe a package of Turkish Delight. The flavors in that box were not filial; they were sensual.

I reached in and chose a dark piece decorated by two stripes. The flavor burst on my tongue subtly: a raspberry note that slowly overtook the bitterness of dark chocolate. I couldn't help but smile.

This is why I wish I had asked. I wish I had asked if she had a secret Roger hidden away, one who gave her raspberry cream-filled chocolates, because she handed me the box, set it on top of the case of Francis John Brown, who married another woman although his first wife was still living.

If she had a secret Roger, than maybe she was just sharing, just offering the chocolates up with the sort of grace that required no acknowledgement. But if she hadn't had any Roger, then maybe she had bought the chocolates for me.

Of course, Niall had bought me gifts. If he couldn't afford a dozen roses, he'd still bought me one. Once he bought me a pen painted silver. I used it to write all of my letters to him.

Whenever he gave me a gift, there was something persistently irritated in his face. It was a vaguely satisfied irritation, as though he resented having to give me gifts at all, but was pleased that he could afford such thoughtful ones. Part of this must have been money: neither of us had any. But part of it was him. Inside, he had no appetite for generosity. Each cent was carefully counted, and he enjoyed extravagance only when it was controlled and budgeted for. It must have gnawed at him that he had to buy me cheap gifts for lack of funds to buy me better ones.

In comparison, Lynette's gifts were often so blindly benevolent that even now I remember them not for what they were, but for the manner in which they were given. She presented them without thought to their cost, without the smug sort of expectation that tends to come with expensive presents. 

Lynette gave with the sort of consideration that comes from never wondering how to stretch a day's worth of money into a week's worth of food. 

I took another of her chocolates, and resolved to not eat any more than that.

Reaching for one of the light flowered chocolates tucked in the corner of the box, Lynette bit it in half slowly, taking her time. Her eyes were on me, and I don't know why I leaned over and kissed her, but I did. She tasted sweet, beyond the tang of maple and milk chocolate.

We still hadn't spoken.

*****

If the threat of constant discovery didn't hang over us, the weight of Karina did. She loomed like one of those clouds that constantly threatens bad weather without ever giving in to the burden of torrential rain.

"How did you deal with her?" Lynette asked, tracing a pattern across the birthmarks on my shoulder.

For a moment I struggled to explain what it was like to live with a nemesis, constantly doubting myself, constantly watching her. I imagined that she might appear, even though she had never ventured into the room I shared with Julianne. She would jump out, and hiss into my hear, " _That is a sin._ "

For a moment, I imagined spitting on this wrathful version of Karina.

Instead, I turned to trace the curve of Lynette's mouth with my finger.

*****

Julianne must have known. But maybe she ignored it, or maybe she watched it like she watched Niall and me, like she watched Karina and me, at a distance, for educational purposes. 

She rarely touched me in those days, rarely said a truly kind word. After her third weekend in a row away, she reached over and curled one of her graceful fingers around a lock of my red hair.

"I hope it's worth it," she said, without preamble.

At the time, I was busy rereading the week's assignments, as if I could fend off the gnaw of hunger by feeding myself words by the bookful. I still froze, though, caught. I wondered at the time if Julianne was aware that I knew about the texture of Lynette's skin, or the shade of her eyes up close. I felt my heart freeze wondering if this was her way of saying something.

Maybe I am giving Julianne too much credit for something she had no patience for. If she had known something, maybe she would have turned it into a game. Maybe she would have announced at large that I was a lesbian, that I was in love with Lynette. Or maybe that is a lie, because although impatient, Julianne was never outright cruel towards me. That was saved for Karina, whose comments burned away at the goodness in the world.

Still, Julianne said something by saying nothing. I believe it was kindness, not ignorance, that made her pull back her hand and say, "The studying."

"It is," I said. I meant both the studying and Lynette. After saying so, I tried hard to refocus, to worry over the words of the text. Instead, I tasted the richness of chocolate on my tongue, the memory of it thick on my palate.

*****

It was easy to create the facade of friendship, to knock at each other's doors and pretend to be there for friendly reasons, only to get distracted with a touch. Her fingers scalded the inside of my thigh through a layer of pantyhose.

And above us, Julianne's skeleton watched, eyes perpetually open, jaw forever slack. It was only bare bones and I wondered what type of person it had been before.

If I'd ever asked, Jules would have told me, but instead I just turned my head away, turned it in to the warmth of Lynette's neck.

"I love your hair," she said. "I almost laughed when you first dyed it, it was so charming."

We were sitting feet apart, me in my desk chair, her on my bed. I wanted to reach out and brush my fingers over her skin, to kiss her jaw, but I held back. My fingers began to ache with the pressure of keeping them curled together around my shins.

There should have been a label for our anxiety in those days, that nameless pressure we felt to be more than we were. I read and read and read and it still wasn't enough. _I_ still wasn't enough to satisfy... who? What? I still don't know.

Society changed around us, society changed through us, and though I loved Lynette, that nameless pressure threatened to kill the spark of affection even as I unclenched my hands and reached for her.

We spoke all the time, then, every word I'd bottled up for Niall, every laugh I'd pressed between pages of books to save for him, I gave to Lynette fully. I could not get enough of her laugh in return, of her sly comments, of the kindness in her eyes.

Silence never could have killed us. I still cannot imagine attempting to smother her with it, the way that I wished to smother Karina. 

I wanted to consume every piece of her, I wanted to hear all her words, I wanted to share all her laughter. There was not a single thing about her I wanted changed. Even now, after all these years, I cannot think of an imperfection, a too wide smile I wished dimmed, a tone of voice I wished less shrill.

She was caught in my hands, and all I remember was the attractive slenderness of her wrists, the shape of her eyes. All I remember is how much I loved her.

*****

In the mornings, it hits me hardest, the scent of her. I imagine sitting in my room at Tonbridge Hall, one of her slender arms around my shoulders, as we wait for the toast to finish. It is hard to shake that off that ache of love. That phantom pain of affection that never heals.

*****

end 

 


End file.
